I'm extremely biased because I'm the co-founder of Formation, but I would consider coaching (not necessarily at Formation but somewhere). It's possible that you're over focused on just passing LC DSA questions and lost track of the whole point of these interviews.
This is the problem solving approach we follow and if you don't have a clean, systematic approach to problems, that could be why you aren't passing, so check this out:
https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/
u/Status-Jump-6454 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>Formation
Thanks for advise. Although, I know all these steps/patterns they tend to follow, it's hard to switch towards it just to pass interviews, because no one works like that IRL.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I actually think that perspective might be limitting you and instead of thinking about just passing the interviews, you are actually passing them becasue you are thinking more clearly, in an organized way, and methodically.
We have someone go to Google who did "only" 150 LC problems and was complemented by interviewers on the problem solving approach (this is also something graded by the interviewers).
u/lara400_501 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Well OP has passed already Amazon and MS interviews. I am pretty sure he/she knows all the tricks.
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
Hi, commented in this thread to OP too, it might be that OP needs to unlearn some tricks. Amazon is a place that's a little more hire fast - fire fast and I tend to see more people go there with tricks or gaming the prep for interviews. Google is a place that wants to hire exceptional people and keep them, and the process is quite hard to game - they are evaluating you on multiple dimensions and not just the raw code being correct/optimal. Of all comoanies, Google is one of the ones that's looking for strong engineering thinking over just code, and you can't game your thinking without being a becoming an actual better thinker haha.
u/Status-Jump-6454 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
My school mates work at Google, so I heard many stories about "looking for strong engineering thinking over just code" from inside.
Can only say it's not exactly true and knitted for a company scale to avoid false-positive.
So, you just need to be adjusted to this interview st
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I would agree that I'm presenting a more philosophical view, and that when you scale anything up there are ways to get advantage, but I do see people regularly who prioritize "the thinking" first for all companies, and then pass Google, whereas people who obsess/only focus on Google tend to not do as well. There's one exception to that case where the person prepared full time (40 hours a week) for 6 months to get into Google and did.
u/lara400_501 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
have you worked at Google or have worked with Ex-Google? I have around 5-6 colleagues from Google. One of them really stands out but I also have awesome colleagues from other places. But the rest of the ex-google is nothing special. Just regular developers which made me question
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah, I have a few dozens former co-workers and/or friends that work there, from L3 to sepcial advisor to the CEO and everything in between.
I haven't worked there myself though and lack that perspective for sure.
I hope I'm not making it sounds like Google is the best, there are lots of companies I find have a higher bar and very talented teams as well.